FROM THE MOMENT our plane touched down at Orly airport in Paris, Sean and I had about 45 hours before we would be departing the city, going on our separate ways. We had a relatively early flight from Rome to Paris which got slightly delayed, so we got to our hotel around two in the afternoon.
The previous evening, I'd sketched out a tentative itinerary of our travels for both days we would be there. In the few hours of daylight that we had left on Friday, we wanted to see the Notre Dame Cathedral, The Louvre, walk down the Champs Elysees to l'Arc de Triomphe, and finish it up with a climb up the Eiffel tower. We were hoping to go to see Louis XIV's Chateau de Versailles on Saturday.
We walked in to our hotel, and were greeted by a friendly hotel lobby receptionist. We talked hotel logistics (he even gave us a discounted rate on our room) and how to get to our desired destinations. I pulled out the folded piece of paper from my back pocket that I had handwritten our itinerary on, and showed it to him.
He gave it one look, and in a soft french accent, said, "No way. You cannot possibly do all of this in two days." He gave us a less ambitious itinerary instead. We said thank you and walked to lunch, griping along the way about how we wouldn't be able to do everything we would want to while in Paris.
Our lunch was a three course meal of crepe de fromage (pancakes with cheese inside, actually quite good!) steak au poivre (steak with pepper sauce, also excellent) and dessert. It was really good, but we were still a little disappointed that our itinerary had been complicated.
But then Sean and I looked at each other and had one of those rare moments where we both knew exactly what the other was thinking. We decided to go against the advice of our friendly hotel lobby receptionist, and stick with our ambitious itinerary anyway.
We started at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, took a quick look inside and were on our way to the Louvre. There was barely any line for tickets so we walked around there for about an hour and a half to two hours (saw the Mona Lisa here). We then took a long walk down the Champs Elysees (where the final stage of the Tour de France is held) to the l'Arc de Triomphe. It was getting cold and our feet hurt from all the walking, so we took a break for dinner at a place near the Eiffel Tower.
We had these sandwiches called Croque Monsieurs, essentially a ham and cheese sandwich (mine had an egg on top) which was quite good. We then walked over to the Eiffel Tower to wait in line for the trip up to the top.
We waited for about an hour in the cold, and finally got on the ride to go up the tower. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let us go all the way to the top because it was too windy and cold that night, so we settled for the second floor, which provided some spectacular views nonetheless. We took the metro home and were both pretty tired, and had no trouble falling asleep that night
We had a later start the next day, as Versailles was the only thing on our itinerary. It was a long, confusing train ride out there, but we eventually figured it out. The palace was amazing. We toured there for just under three hours or so. I think it would've been better to see it in the spring or summer when all of the flowers would be in full bloom. Still, very cool to have seen it (hard to believe that someone lived in a place that big!). We had dinner at a place near our hotel, I had french onion soup, steak au poivre (for the second time, but still really good, probably better than the first night), and tarte aux pommes (apple pie, good in France too!).
So despite the fact that our friendly hotel lobby receptionist cautioned us against our ambitious itinerary, we saw everything we wanted to, just as we'd planned.
We had flights out of separate airports, so we said our goodbyes at the metro stop and we were on our respective ways. It was a great weekend of site seeing.
Next up, Florence and Tuscany, tomorrow and Tuesday. I'll be back Wednesday with more pictures on Facebook, and another post here.
JC
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